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Channel Dash (Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union)
The Channel Dash, codenamed Operation: Cerberus by the Germans, was a major naval engagement during World War II in which a German Kriegsmarine squadron consisting of the German battleship ''Bismarck'', the two Scharnhorst-class battleships ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau'', the battlecruiser ''Hindenburg'', and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen along with escorts, ran a British blockade and successfully sailed from Brest in Brittany to their home bases in Germany via the English Channel. The move was ordered for two reasons: on the one hand Brest was within reach of British planes and became too dangerous, on the other hand, from a base further north, it would be easier to interdict North Atlantic convoys, which were giving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union much needed and growing help. On 11 February 1942, the Kriegsmarine's ships left Brest at 21:14 and escaped detection for more than 12 hours, approaching the Straits of Dover without discovery. As the German ships passed through the straits and on into the North Sea, British armed forces intercepted them, and the Royal Air Force, the Fleet Air Arm and Coastal Artillery attacked. The attacks and bombardment were unsuccessful, and by 13 February all the Kriegsmarine's ships had completed their transit. In support of the German naval operation, the Luftwaffe launched Operation: Donnerkeil (Thunderbolt) to provide air superiority for the passage of the ships. All of the Kriegsmarine's major warships succesfully returned to their home bases in Germany to refit for the eventual redeployment to Norway. The ''Bismarck''-class battleship ''Tirpitz'''' had been completed on 25 February 1941 in Wilhelmshaven, and left the port on 14 January 1942 for Trondheim, Norway. She reached Trondheim two days later, on 16 January 1942. The heavy cruisers ''Admiral Scheer and Prinz Eugen sailed from Wilhelmshaven on 20 February 1942 to Norway, and the heavy cruiser ''Admiral Hipper'' sailed to the new naval base at Nordstern, Northern Norway on 19-20 March 1942. The Kriegsmarine's first aircraft carrier, ''Graf Zeppelin'', was completed in April 1943, followed by the ''Graf Zeppelin''-class aircraft carrier ''Peter Strasser'' in June 1943. Both Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft carriers vastly improved the capabilites of the Kriegsmarine, as the two warships became the pride of the Kriegsmarine. The two aircraft carriers, escorted by the newly completed ''Admiral Hipper''-class heavy cruiser ''Seydlitz'' and the massive 700,000-tonnes ''H''-class super battleship ''H45'' (the largest, heaviest and most powerful battleship ever built) sailed from Kiel, Germany in September 1943 to rendezvous with the German High Seas Fleet stationed in Northern Norway in preparation for future operations against Arctic convoys and Allied invasion of Norway. The massive concentration of Kriegsmarine warships at bases in Norway, along with very large numbers of aircraft of the Luftwaffe prevented the Allies from attacking Norway and link up with the Soviet Red Army. The 131,000-tonnes H''-class super battleship [[German battleship H44 (Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union)|''Führer]] and her sister ship, the 56,444-tonnes ''Friedrich der Große'', ''along with the 110,000-tonnes [[H-class aircraft carrier (Japanese invasion of the Soviet Union)|''H]]-class very large heavy aircraft carrier ''Führer'' and the two 63,000-tonnes ''I''-class heavy aircraft carriers ''I'' and ''Europa'', would form the new German East Asia Squadron, based at Tientsin in the Pacific. The formation of the German East Asia Squadron led Nazi Germany to finally enter the Pacific War and join the Empire of Japan. After the Japanese defeat in the Battle of Midway fought on 6 June 1942, in which four Japanese aircraft carriers (''Akagi'', ''Amagi'', ''Sōryū'' and ''Hiryū'') were sunk, Nazi Germany decided to dispatch the German East Asia Squadron to the Pacific to reinforce the Imperial Japanese Navy's ''Kidō Butai''. Nazi Germany's decision to enter the Pacific War and support the Empire of Japan would prove crucial when the Axis Powers defeated the Allied Powers in the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, which led to the Japanese invasion of the United States.